What does HackerNews think of tuya-convert?
A collection of scripts to flash Tuya IoT devices to alternative firmwares
FYI - there are plenty of cheap Tuya devices[0] that can be flashed with alternative firmware[1] which works locally. More generically, there a lot of ESP32-based switches that work with Tasmota open-source firmware[2]. There breadth of devices is annoying because it makes configuration difficult since manufacturer wire up the relays differently, so it took me trial and error to figure out which device/"port" the firmware needs to toggle to turn the switch on or off
0. Any device that requires installation of a phone app named "Smart Life" or "Tuya Smart".
Unfortunately some newer plugs are incompatible with the hack (different chipset - https://github.com/ct-Open-Source/tuya-convert/issues/484 ).
If that isn't an option (for reasons like not wanting to permanently damage them or being afraid of electrical shocks) a lot of them come with tuya firmware, which you can (still) often exploit and convert with TUYA-CONVERT [2].
I found the Tasmota Device Templates Repository[3] to be a really valuable resource, although I've been using zigbee devices for lightbulbs.
[1]https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota
After going through zigbee and zwave, I feel like I finally arrived at a solution that allows me plenty of reasonably priced selection and extreme customization (e.g. just using the warm/cold white LEDs on a RGB+white bulb).
Great experience so far and completely automated integration within homeassistant.
I hope that the esphome-configs project [2] will grow over the next little while and provide more and more copy+paste configurations for various hardware.